All That Was Happy

by M. M. Wilshire

  “What time are you off work?” she said.

  “I’ll be out of here just after 12,” he said.

  “Were you attracted to me?” she said. “Or was that just your way of hustling a tip?”

  “I was looking,” he said.

  She took a cocktail napkin from his tray, along with his pen, and began carefully drawing.

  “This is my address,” she said. “It’s right off Wilshire. I’ve been married to the same man for twenty-nine years--I’m sure that’s longer than you are old. In all that time, I’ve never been with anybody else. Today that man served me with divorce papers. Now listen to me. I’m going home and going to bed--but I’m leaving the back door open. Do I have to say anything else?”

  He cleared his throat. “Do you even want to know my name?” he said.

  “Not really,” she said.

  “It’s Huntington,” he said. “What’s yours?”

  “Let’s not make it awkward,” she said, turning on her heel and heading straight out through the back.

  Chapter 7

  “I can tell by your boldness you’ve done this before,” Beckie said. “And often. But just because you’re assertive, don’t expect me to get me warmed up to the point emotionally where I become attached to you and start to whimper over you simply because you’re sleeping in my bed. And don’t think for a minute because you’ve managed to get this far, that I’m going to be fixing you a fancy breakfast in the morning. If you’re hungry, and you can’t find anything yourself, you can ask me, but I’ll probably just open a can. And another thing--I expect you to be quiet in here, and don’t think I’m going to be screaming out your name at any time, or making up cute little pet names or other terms of endearment--no, it’s not ever going to be like that. From this point on, you’re just going to be Mr. Boopers, and that’s all you’ll ever be.”

  This being said, Mr. Boopers, flushed with victory at having recently, with only a few barks, sent a giant shark packing, turned around three times at Beckie’s feet and curled into a tiny ball. Beckie, teeth freshly brushed, and wearing her best silk teddy, turned out the light and waited. The curtains were half-open and the moonlight illumined the shelf on the opposite wall which supported her collections of miniature brick-a-brac, a row of antique porcelain glazed figurines gathered here and there along the pathway of her twenty-nine years of marriage.

  Suddenly, she needed to open the curtains all the way to let the rest of the moonlight in--that’d been something she’d always wanted to do before, but Bernie, with his problems sleeping, had never allowed it. She remembered the time they’d stayed at the condo in Palm Springs in August, and how she’d slept outside in her swimsuit by the pool in the full moonlight on a night so hot even her sweat dried instantly, wishing Bernie would join her where she lay, awash in the intense spirituality of the moon’s rays--but he’d stayed true to form, preferring to sleep by himself alone in the air-conditioned grotto.

  I was hot and he was cold, she thought. Rising from her bed, she threw open the curtains and fiercely breathed in the moonbeams--it wasn’t much, but it was a step towards something. She returned to bed and joined Mr. Boopers atop the sheets, as though to re-create the moment from long ago in Palm Springs.

  No, she thought. Bernie wasn’t always cold. She remembered the time she came back from a trip with Leah to San Diego and Bernie was waiting for her, the dining table set with their wedding silver, the magnificent pieces surrounding a large vase of white chrysanthemums--her favorite, in the center of the table--along with lit candles and poured wine, accompanied by the mouth watering smells from a gourmet stroganoff on a silver platter on the sideboard. After a sumptuous dinner, he’d stroked her long blonde hair for hours and insisted she never leave him alone again.

  Bernie hadn’t always been the ice and stone he’d become--there was the time after her second miscarriage, when she’d awakened to find him sitting up in the room they’d prepared for the baby, just sitting there on top of the little fruit wood toy chest they’d picked out together at the flea market on the Strand.

  Dear God, she prayed, let this not be true--don’t let this divorce be happening to me.

  She half-laughed. The prayer wasn’t going to work--she’d already been given the knife in the back--the divorce was real--perhaps a little too real for any last minute rescue by God. Besides, God didn’t owe her a thing. She’d been a weak Catholic and married outside the church--a Las Vegas wedding, to boot! In truth, the Church didn’t even recognize her marriage--not as far as she knew. She’d broken every commandment when she’d married Bernie--she’d not honored her father and her mother--now it was payback time. God had waited until the time it would hurt the most, and then he’d stuck the knife in her back and started twisting the blade.

  Sooner than she expected to, she heard the back door open. For a brief instant, the sound startled her--she’d been so lost in her ruminations that she’d forgotten what she’d done! Mr. Boopers, apparently a light sleeper, was rigidly alert, emitting a wary, cutting growl.

  Huntington appeared in the bedroom doorway, the embodiment of her sins, a man perhaps half her age, at the threshold where she lay atop the moonlit covers. Mr. Boopers, sensing no alarm from her and not yet knowing who belonged in his new life and who didn’t, chose the prudent action of disappearing under the bed from which vantage point he could prepare his next move, if one was required.

  She started to speak and couldn’t, realizing with surprise there was a choking lump in her throat. Whether it was from shame or desire, she couldn’t tell. Huntington approached her and sat on the edge of the bed, reaching out a tentative hand to her long blonde hair spread over the pillow.

  “I belong to a group,” Huntington said. “I’m sure you’ve never heard of it--it was just something that I got into when I was forced to undergo a considerable amount of post-pubescent torture at San Marino High School. You might say it was a reaction to all the drugs and general weirdness I was exposed to. Some of my friends and myself needed a refuge from the disaster we sensed was occurring to the kids around us.”

  Oh you little fool, Beckie thought. You willful little fool, you’ve just made a huge mistake--this guy’s barely out of high school. She started to rise, to start in motion some sort of effort to cast him out of her room, but his hand stroking her hair was somehow comforting--she sensed no evil in Huntington, no aggressiveness.

  “We called the group The Young Fogies,” he said. “You know--you’ve heard of Old Fogies--the old geezers in the films from the 30’s who smoked the best quality Cuban cigars and drank the best Sherry from the finest crystal, all the while presiding with studied earnestness over all that was Victorian? Well, it was like that--we wanted to be like those old fogies--only we were young--so we formed a group and we all pledged ourselves to live a life of truth, honor and valor.”

  “I’m too old for you,” Beckie said. “I want you to know that it is not my custom to proposition waitpersons in bars. I’ve just had a very, very bad day. I was in a lot of pain when I approached you tonight, and I didn’t want to sleep alone--maybe I wanted to see if I still had it, I don’t know--the fact that you showed up in a way gratified me, but it also horrified me. I’m sure I’m not making much sense, but I just now realized when you showed up that all my troubles can’t be so easily tidied away.”

  “I’m sorry, too,” Huntington said. “I should never have come here--I think I was tempting fate, or testing myself, or whatever, because, you see, one of the things we Young Fogies pledged to ourselves was to follow the old-fashioned virtue of saving ourselves for marriage. But I had a moment of weakness when I saw you this afternoon--you simply struck me as the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen. When you approached me tonight, I was powerless--I just couldn’t fight it.”

  Of all the things that could have come out of Huntington’s mouth, that for sure was the last thing Beckie expected.

  “You must like my hair,” Beckie said.

  “Your hair shining in
this moonlight is beautiful,” he said. “And so are you--in every way.”

  “I’m too old for you,” she said. “You’ve made a mistake coming here. You should have fought harder to resist me.”

  “I want to kiss you,” Huntington said. “May I?”

  “I really don’t know if it’s a good idea,” she said. “You’re the first person besides my husband to kiss me since I was twenty years old.”

  He bent forward and slowly pressed his rather sensitive, expressive lips atop hers. The kiss confused her, the action at once alarming and at the same time powerful, something to be explored further for its possibility of introducing the sweetness of pleasure into the bitterness of her life while at the same time serving to blunt her pain and guilt. As abruptly as he’d started the kiss, he drew back.

  “If we stop now,” he said, “we can still collect ourselves. We haven’t gone too far. We can still handle it.”

  “You don’t like me,” she said.

  “No,” he said. “That’s not it. The real problem is--I like you too much.”

  Pity surged in her chest for the young man, and for herself. She couldn’t go back to her youth, of that she was sure, and it was highly improbable he was prepared to take on all the baggage she had packed from the last three decades. She surprised herself by standing up straight, slipping on her robe and acting quite normally for a middle-aged woman who’d just been kissed by a much younger, total stranger after twenty-nine years of marriage.

  “Huntington,” she said, “I know it’s late, but would a Young Fogy such as yourself like a really, really good cigar?”

  Chapter 8

  “It’s a Macanudo,” Beckie said. “My husband used to smoke one every evening after work. They’re grown in Jamaica from Cuban seeds.”

  “If they’re good enough for your husband, they’re good enough for me,” he said, balancing the eight-inches of serious cigar between the thumb and third finger of his right hand, exhaling with some evident satisfaction a ring of smoke into the ripened air of the living room.

  “You’re not too old for me,” he said.

  “I am,” she said. “And it’s too soon to be discussing something like this anyway. I’m not even divorced yet--I only got served the papers this morning. I’ve got a stiff round of lawyers and mediations to deal with before I’m even close to being legally available again. Even after I am, it might take years before my emotions recover.”

  “I’m rich,” he said.

  “Of course you are,” she said. “Everybody knows all the waiters at Chillers are millionaires.”

  “No, it’s true,” he said. “And another thing--I’m a lot older than I look--I’m thirty-seven, but because I’m blond and lanky, most people think I’m twenty-five.”

  “How did you acquire your fortune?” Beckie said.

  “Easy,” he said. “--after I graduated from UCLA, my dad, in a misguided attempt to prevent me from doing something Kerouac-esque, shipped me off to Harvard B-School. When I got out of there, I went to work for Goldman Sachs in New York for ten years and I made a pile on the trading floor.”

  “Even if that were true,” she said, “money doesn’t impress me--I’m part owner of a very successful tool importing company, and I’m worth many millions. So don’t expect me to simply swoon on the altar of your financial ego.”

  “I only mention money to show you that I can be taken seriously,” he said. “--that I’m not just another flake.”

  “Show me your license,” she said. “If you just lied to me--if it doesn’t match your age, it’s all over.”

  “Not yet,” he said. “If I show it to you, and I’m thirty-seven like I said, will you agree to start seeing me within the context of starting a serious relationship?”

  “There’s no way you’re thirty-seven,” Beckie said. “But if you are, I’ll agree for my part to keep listening.”

  Huntington whipped out his license.

  “Oh wow,” Beckie said. “You are thirty-seven. I can’t believe it. At least that much is true about you, although I’m sure you’re not really a wealthy ex-investment banker. I can’t believe you look so young! You’ve got apple cheeks!”

  “I’m of Polish descent,” he said. “The apple cheeks run in the family. So we have a date for tomorrow, then?”

  “Not so fast,” Beckie said. “I only agreed I’d keep listening to you for awhile. You know I’m in the middle of a huge emotional conundrum--are you sure you want to take that on?”

  Huntington stepped close to her and suddenly the room felt close with heat.

  “I’ll take it on,” he said.

  “Last question,” she said. “If we’re going to see each other even one more time, I must insist that we start off by being totally honest with each other. So I want you to tell me the truth about your past and why you’re working at Chillers or it’s no deal. I won’t refuse to see you tomorrow night if you’ll tell me the truth--just admit you lied to impress me or whatever and we’ll let it go.”

  “Everything I told you is true,” he said. “There was just one thing I didn’t tell you.”

  “Spill it,” she said.

  “I own Chillers,” he said.

  Chapter 9

  “If the problems in your life seem overwhelming,” Scotia said, “that’s the exact moment when you should try to give yourself a little pleasure--Vito can see you at 1:30. We’re down on Doheny a couple of blocks south of Sunset--you can’t miss it, it’s a cute little Tudor job with a sign out front that says Vito’s Of Beverly Hills.”

  “I’ll see you after lunch, then,” Beckie said.

  She’d awoken to a chill, gray, joyless mid-morning which promised her shocked emotions little relief. Upon reflection of last night’s events, especially as they concerned the possibility of keeping some sort of sporadic company with Huntington, the younger man she’d entertained the night before, and after having given herself an unusually harsh appraisal in the morning mirror, upon said sober reflection, she’d decided to spend the afternoon immersing herself in a marathon round of beauty treatments at the day spa where Scotia worked and where, she’d learned from the waif, there was a hairdresser named Vito, a man with just one name--a tactic which ostensibly kept the man’s reputation on a height with, and in close keeping with other Hollywood legends who also adhered to the one-name practice, such as Madonna, and Cher--or if his singular name did not exactly keep Vito at their nosebleed heights, it at least kept him high enough to be considered a hairstylist of legendary renown north of Melrose and south of Sunset, in an area which bordered 90210, where a reputation for doing good hair was a considerable feat in the fast-paced and ever-changing world of hairstylists, at least as far as the Hollywood crowd was concerned, among whom were numbered, as Scotia had informed her, such fiery, sanguine and ethereal beauties such as Halle Berry and Jeri Ryan, and once, although only for a fast nail repair--the great Liz Taylor herself.

  The phone rang--Leah.

  “Leah, I can’t talk,” Beckie said. “I’m hurrying to get ready--I’ve got an appointment with Doctor Black in twenty-five minutes, after which I’ll just have time to grab a bite before my 1:30 at this new day spa I learned about last night. I’ll probably be at the spa until at least 5, but after that, I wondered if you and Ira would like to join a friend and myself for dinner someplace around here.”

  “A friend?” Leah asked.

  “I’ll explain later--why don’t you set something up at a nice place around here--no, wait--let’s drive out to the Valley--I’m hungry for some real Mexican food. I’ll meet you and Ira at Taxco, the one in Van Nuys, at 7.”

  “I saw Bernie last night,” Leah said. “He wants to make a time for us all to get together at his lawyer’s office tomorrow. What’ll I tell him?”

  “You know, Leah,” Beckie said. “Someday, maybe a few hundred years after The Big One, archeologists are going to be digging in the rubble around here, looking for artifacts. You know what they’re going to find, along with all tha
t broken pottery? They’re going to find my broken heart lying in the ruins of this living room--why did you have to call me about Bernie and his stupid meeting? I was just getting up enough nerve to get past the bogged-down feeling that I woke up with, and now you’ve sent me straight back to the bottom. I’m popping an extra Tofranil even as we speak.”

  “I’m so sorry, Beckie,” Leah said. “You don’t deserve this--you’re such a good, amazing lady--the more people I meet in this life, I realize you are simply the best one of them all. I tell you, Bernie never deserved you--I always told him that over the years you two were together--now it’s come true. If he wasn’t my brother-in-law, I’d disown him.”

  “It’s just that the sound of his name is so crushing to me right now,” Beckie said. “And as far as meeting with him and his lawyer tomorrow--well, all I can tell you is, I’ll have to let you know. Just tell Mr. Cradle-Snatcher that you’ll let him know after you see me tonight. That’s the best I can do right now.”

  “I understand, sweetie,” Leah said.

  “I know you do, doll,” Beckie said. “I’m just hanging on, right now. I’m only now starting to realize that ultimately, I’m going to have to start my life all over again--and I have no idea where to even begin.”

  “We’ll see you tonight,” Leah said.

  Beckie consulted a card in her purse and dialed Dr. Black’s exchange. “This is Beckie,” she said. “I’m feeling suicidal again. I started out okay this morning, and even made a hair appointment, but all of a sudden, I’m back to square one. The Tofranil isn’t holding.”

  “Hold please,” the operator said.

  “Beckie?” Dr. Black’s rich, firm voice.

  “I’m sorry to bug you, Dr. Black,” Beckie said. “I just had another strong desire to use the gun on myself again--I thought I’d better call--I don’t think I’m up for my appointment this morning.”

  “You know, Beckie,” Dr. Black said. “You’re on the verge of living a rich full life--are you going to choose to get off your butt and get to work, or are you going to cry in the corner and say good-bye to all your dreams?”